The least funny man on earth is Bill Maher. He once had a show called “Politically Incorrect.” I watched it one night because local novelist Dean Koontz was on it. Maher was not funny, but he was the epitome of political correctness. The last thing he was, was “politically incorrect.”
A friend of mine recently lamented going to one of Maher’s comedy “shows” somewhere here in Southern California. “Every other word was the f-word,” my friend said. How can somebody with such a limited vocabulary be funny?
Compare Maher to my favorite, Groucho Marx. “Say the magic word” and he’d have you howling for an hour. When Warner Brothers threatened to sue for copyright infringement because its film “Casablanca” was followed by Groucho’s film “A Night in Casablanca,” Groucho wrote them:
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca. It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca. I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
Now that’s funny. Not an f-word among it.
Groucho must have had the future blighted by Maher in mind when Groucho said, “I thought my razor was dull, then I heard his speech.” Or, “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” Or, “I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.”
And Groucho’s brother Harpo could keep you laughing just as long as Groucho without saying a word. Then he’d play his magical harp.
Anyway…
Maher reportedly just made fun of Pope Benenedict XVI, who’s visiting America. I don’t know the details, and don’t want to know them.
Charlie Reese, one of my favorite columnists and not a Catholic himself, has a great column on Maher and the Pope:
It’s not a free-speech issue. It’s an issue of good judgment and good taste, or more specifically the lack thereof. Just because we can do something or say something doesn’t mean we should. I personally don’t think people’s faith, whatever it is, should be mocked, nor their religious leaders ridiculed.
Why give religious leaders a free pass? Because it is a serious thing to cause someone to lose his or her faith. It’s not the same as learning that your favorite movie star is a mean drunk or your favorite politician is a crook. That kind of knowledge doesn’t alter your worldview. You already knew some people get mean when they drink and that some politicians are crooks. You just pick someone else to support.
But suppose you lose your faith in the existence of God? That alters your worldview like an earthquake. It opens up the abyss of nothingness and meaninglessness. It causes a person to question everything he or she ever learned about the world and about good and evil. That’s far too serious an impact on a human being to be inflicted by some cynical comic in search of a cheap laugh.
Right.
I like to laugh a lot. For example, as you may have gathered, I’m a big Marx Brothers fan. But I hate blasphemous jokes, or jokes that seriously attack someone’s religion.
Another problem is that, although I’m one of those people who has a hard time remembering how to tell a joke exactly (I seem to be better at ridiculing immediate circumstances), the one exception is that I remember anti-religious jokes. Maybe because my hatred of them is burned into my brain. So I try to avoid them.
Anyway, my happiest day will be the last one I hear or see Bill Maher, or a reference to that unfunny, politically correct apparatchik.
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Well said.
I believe that religion is the greatest fraud and hoax ever perpetrated upon humanity, but am adamantly opposed to the antics of such as Bill Maher and other atheists’ attempts to kill it off. It will likely always be with us. If Maher doesn’t like religion, then all he has to do is ignore it, and hope that humanity simply outgrows it.
No one likes proseltyzers, but I don’t ridicule Mormons who ring my doorbell in an attempt to “save” another soul. They are as entitled to their delusions as I am to mine.
It’s a strange and mysterious universe in which we live, and ANYTHING is possible…..so pick your favorite myth, live it, and let others do the same without any of the serious crap that Maher delivers.
I used to like Maher because his iconoclastic jabs were often funny. Now, however, he’s gone way over the top. Maybe he doesn’t truly understand the terror of having to live in Nazi Germany as a young boy. The Pope (whom I believe to be largely benign) has done nothing to incur such vitriol from a stand up comic who appears to have gotten too godamn big for his friggin’ britches.
Well written and emotionally satisfing blog and comment.
I dont know why I watch him at all. His bitterness totally envelops his comedy. His thinly veiled hatred of some groups over others is more than transparent. I too long for that day.